There are coded means for characters to try to support themselves through crafting, or just plain low-level physical labor.
Can one of you come up with an equivalent in-game mechanism for someone trying to role play a strumpet or whatever a way to fill in the dry spells?
Maybe if one hangs out in a certain place long enough (a public bawdy house), some less than appealing NPC will come up and proposition for a small number of coins? Something like that. The PC could tell that character "yes" to accept. Maybe with a few outcomes (e.g. low chance that the PC will be beaten up or robbed).
The reason I bring this up is that I witnessed what I believe was someone's final disenchantment with the game today. The character was lively and well-played and deserved some attention, but sometimes the other PCs aren't in position to deliver. So the result was discouragement and finally just cutting link. After a final attempt to converse with my character, which actually makes me feel kind of bad. Maybe if that character had a means of low level support, it wouldn't have happened.
Just forage for clay but pretend that every glob of clay is a satisfied client.
people need to be more self-sufficient and take up another craft to keep them going while they work on building the clientele to actually be a whore.
Quote from: evilcabbage on November 30, 2017, 01:07:53 AM
people need to be more self-sufficient and take up another craft to keep them going while they work on building the clientele to actually be a whore.
Currently, yes.
Might not take much to give the other sorts of labors a bit more verisimilitude in game.
I haven't read the jobs helpfile lately, but perhaps if that helpfile were explicit about which jobs have coded support for, and which would need the help of other players, and then which would need the help of players, staff and powerful players.
I say this because this reminds me of a few years back, before gladiator pcs were a thing, when a newbie dwarf was chatting excitedly in the Gaj about hoping to become a gladiator. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to break his heart.
Being that explicit in the helpfile would have helped me, as I have the most unstable playtimes known to man and need income that I don't have to depend on seeing someone regularly for. I suppose one could always roll 'a waittress' with the merchant guild and slowly spend money on cheap food and pretend to work until they're forced to consider real options.
More shitty food options might help - maybe have the grocer and other NPCs sell some spoiled/lightly spoiled food at a large discount.
I have also noticed that some newbies seem to think that food has to be bought from taverns, and run out of money quickly because of that. I think it's in the documentation somewhere that cheaper food is available elsewhere, but I'm not sure where and how easily it is for a newbie to come across that.
Seen other games have 'profession tokens' you can turn into a quartermaster for a pittance of coin, if PCs don't cover you economically, but you're filling a RP niche of the game.
So you could have:
-A brothel in Allanak, with a few NPCs akin to the Pleasure Den in Luirs. Prostitutes could semi-operate out of here, at least RP wise.
-An NPC Host/Hostess that is your quartermaster (new clan, PCs individually recruited into the clan if they either work for Kurac in Luirs, or at the brothel in Allanak).
-You can ask for pay every month or so, like any other sort of employee in a clan. It pays like 100 coins. Considered to be virtual whoring.
or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.
I think its a legitimate argument. Give prostitution a place. I think there should be more in city jobs for new players in general. It shouldn't be enough, but it should help.
Quote from: evilcabbage on November 30, 2017, 04:22:36 AM
or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.
More that if you want to RP/play a whore and fill that RP niche, surviving off the PC economy is a dicey proposition at best. Almost every other profession in the game has some sort of NPC involvement/automation, considering selling your crafts to NPCs, grebbing locations, and so on. I imagine it's a tough role to play, not that having a tough role is a bad thing.
Set up a skanky brothel, forage for artifacts. As you forage, you find genitalia tokens. Turn in 100 genitalia tokens for a day's pay.
I personally don't like the automated jobs, but having sat on #help on the discord, it is a common theme from newer players, especially off-peak players: what jobs can I do? I can see how some people just love that aspect of the game -- it explains why farmville and the like are so popular.
What sort of further jobs could we brainstorm up? I can't imagine implementing them will be that fun (you'll have to balance things out, etc.), but maybe we can get some ideas rolling. Here's the list of the current jobs (help jobs: http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Jobs):
Clay Digging
Cotton Picking (hahah)
Dung Scraping
Logging
Mining
Salt Gathering
Spice Sifting
We might narrow our brainstorm to automated jobs that a city-based character would engage in. From the list above, this is just 'dung scraping'.
The only practical suggestion I see from above is prostitution, which I just don't see how automated prostitution could be implemented.
Another thought: If it is just a matter of having enough 'money' to support yourself as a flavor independent city-based PC, I think it might be neat to have a subclass called 'Wealth' which would give you a monthly income -- be it from family or perhaps a small virtual business (e.g., a little cheese stall or something).
Quote from: nauta on November 30, 2017, 11:24:35 AM
I personally don't like the automated jobs, but having sat on #help on the discord, it is a common theme from newer players, especially off-peak players: what jobs can I do? I can see how some people just love that aspect of the game -- it explains why farmville and the like are so popular.
What sort of further jobs could we brainstorm up? I can't imagine implementing them will be that fun (you'll have to balance things out, etc.), but maybe we can get some ideas rolling. Here's the list of the current jobs (help jobs: http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Jobs):
Clay Digging
Cotton Picking (hahah)
Dung Scraping
Logging
Mining
Salt Gathering
Spice Sifting
We might narrow our brainstorm to automated jobs that a city-based character would engage in. From the list above, this is just 'dung scraping'.
The only practical suggestion I see from above is prostitution, which I just don't see how automated prostitution could be implemented.
Another thought: If it is just a matter of having enough 'money' to support yourself as a flavor independent city-based PC, I think it might be neat to have a subclass called 'Wealth' which would give you a monthly income -- be it from family or perhaps a small virtual business (e.g., a little cheese stall or something).
I like that idea. The subguild could generally cover those flavor jobs (and state so in the helpfile) wherein income is reliant on PC interaction and participation. I've just seen prostitute/whore PCs give up pretty quickly, because no one in their given realm of play is interested in pursuing sexual plots, but they're still fun to have around and bring a side of the game to life that would otherwise be virtual.
Kurac is the best known house for pleasures of the flesh. They have a place in Luir's designed around the RP of it.
Most of the jobs in game are backed by some other house (Jal for salt, etc).
What if there was a single room whore-house in Allanak, like the one in Luir's, where:
You check in, and receive a token (like a tailor ticket)
If you leave the room for any reason, you must give up the token.
If you stay in the room for <x> amount of time (hour based, up to a four hour work day), you can turn in that ticket for 20 coins per hour worked.
If you leave without turning in the ticket, you get nothing.
Technically, you wouldn't have to emote, or do anything to earn the passive income. 80coins a day is a lot, and the numbers could be altered, but it would be a start. Make it a semi-public place so people can see if PC whores are using it, and they can be contacted for favors outside the whorehouse.
First I'm gonna say that courtesans are NOT whores and should not be thought of as them. This requires a rich ass motherfucker/Noble/Templar to pay to take care of this person's needs and wants IN EXCHANGE for being his/her sex toy/arm candy/trophy. We do not NEARLY see this portrayed enough. Come on nobles, get you a concubine!
Re: Whoring?
I've played two bonafide prostitutes in my tenure at Arm. My first ended up having to join Salarr cause she didn't make enough money with her sugar daddy to be kept. The other did quite well. Cabbage is right, Kurac hires whore (they even have a den!) but the clan does NOT have a whore rank, they have 'hostesses' who might whore and that was told to me by staff. We need a clan to support this. It's one of the things I've wanted to change in the gameworld because until there's a clan for it there doesn't seem to be a player supported mindset.
Quote from: chrisdcoulombe on November 30, 2017, 07:22:00 AM
I think its a legitimate argument. Give prostitution a place. I think there should be more in city jobs for new players in general. It shouldn't be enough, but it should help.
Quote from: evilcabbage on November 30, 2017, 04:22:36 AM
or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.
Please do NOT automate shit. Before you know it you'll have 45 'whores' who do NOTHING. This is Zalanthas where the story matters and part of that story is struggle.
I played a whore once, it was sucessful, unsure why, I faded mostly. I don't see how you fail at whoring but, let's not finish that thought.
I'm with grapes on this one, having played a prostitute in the past.
One issue may be that at this time no one want's to pay for that, but seriously now... people should certainly hit up the ic prostitutes. Even if you fade, many residents in nak would be doing it.
It's not just whores. Any service-type job requires one to depend on the population for income: caravan guard, server, fortune teller, hairdresser, street sweeper. A lot of these jobs add cool flavor to the game, but are hard to start, absolutely, and frequently hard to maintain based on PC commerce alone. I can definitely see a niche in the game that could be made more playable by some code love.
I can see a couple ways one could approach this.
- As someone already pointed out, you could create a new category of forage for jobs. Like forage (customers). This could give you either small amounts of coin or food/water items. The problem with forage is its spammy, the echoes won't really line up with the IC reality, and it's hard to regulate for realism. It would also pull these players away from social interaction with PCs, which is really the end goal.
- You could borrow from the crafting code. If all laborers were required to have a license (like a merchant's token), you could make that item craftable, but so that it would never be destroyed in the crafting process. Then, they could simply 'craft token into poor.customer' and, if successful, they would receive rewards, as above. The problem again here, is that it's spammy. I think this one could be made to work really well if someone wanted to go to the trouble of making it so A) there was never a begin craft message, only a message like "~me leaves with a poor-looking customer for a while before returning." on success and B) I'd like to see it make the ldesc message said "~me is here [working] as a server" instead, as it would clarify things, and possibly invite more interaction and commerce with other PCs.
- Possibly the easiest way to do this would be to have a clan that paid laborers, like if the city managed all such persons, and paid them a portion of their earnings. So, they would be OOCly required to stand around RPing in a place appropriate for their job, but could then pick up a weekly stipend for the coin they earned virtually while logged out for their city pimp/overseer/etc. You would have to limit it to people not in other clans, and it would be truly awesome if their pay varied a little, like say 50–150 coins per RL week, to simulate the feast or famine nature of freelance service work.
I agree that something is needed. I like JDM's last idea a lot.
Yes, how do we take something that typically involves the MOST roleplay (mudsex for game-coins), and completely eliminate all roleplay from it?
No thanks.
By eliminate all RP from it I mean eliminate even the possibility of fading. With y'know - other people. No robberies, no assassinations, you don't even know who your virtual partner is - what he looks like, whether she's an elf or a rinthi human, if you fail, do you lose all your belongings to a virtual thief? Or if you critically fail do they kill you?
"You haven't fucked enough men, friend."
I mean, I do see things and go, "What? Why not?" JDM's post is spot on about potentlial solutions, but codedly, there really aren't any, and the logistics of the job kind of make it nigh impossible given the environment.
Questions whores must ask themselves... how much should I charge? Is that enough to cover my IC time? What about nutrition spent during the act itself? Shoot, what about water? Considering each time you get paid in coins for services, how long might it be between customers?
And if you really study that, you'll see IC solutions are few and far between, beyond being an absolutely fantastic whore, you're not going to be able to codedly fead yourself no matter how much you charge. Some players will pay for a fade just because it makes sense for their characters, and others may want some ERP in exchange for their coins, this costs time, sometimes hours, and over time, days.
The thing with RPing a whore, I realized, much less anyone else trading a service, is to realize that the payout isn't a sort of if/then machine process. You engage in activities, you collect your coin, but hard as characters like to talk, you dig out a little space in their hearts and find a place to rest there. You got, eh, thirty sid? For how much effort? But like anyone bartering services, you know it's not about the payout, or the end result. If you are hungry, someone will be sure to feed you. If you need shelter, someone will give you that. Any need you can imagine can fulfilled with that arrangement, provided you don't look to hard at the results, because how much you charge is really just a courtesy, it's not, if I do X I get Y, it's if I do X I get Y and I get slid into some plotlines, I get free things because I impressed someone, I get to turn around and blackmail someone because of particular circumstances. Whores get a considerable windfall due to these exchanges of services in that they stimulate the release of oxytocin in another character.
If you're rping a whore and not seeing that, then something is off in the exchange. It's not a very easy IC job because a lot of people, if they're paying coin, don't want a faded scene, which means you'll have to RP out every detail, and get paid, something that won't cover the food you lost in the process, but again, it's about more than the initial exchange, and if you do a good job of it, expect to reap far more than your initial asking price. I hear the new guild system is making merchants more playable, as it originally was, Merchants without crafting subguilds didn't really start with enough skills that actually codedly made coin, so you had to get creative, and/or join a house, or die. What little I'm seeing of the new guilds being tested, from the outside, is they actually START with skills they can make money on.
why should that transfer to a whore, though? you want money, there are tons of jobs you can do like foraging, joining a clan (KURAC, HELLO), things like that that will pay money until you can get yourself established enough where high-paying clientele will come in.
and like someone else said - play your cards right and things like food, water, and shelter won't even be a problem. somebody will be a rich sugar momma/papa for you.
but you want to be able to sit somewhere and "craft" pleasure? "forage" john's and jane's for money? no thank you. erp it, fade it, do whatever, but we have enough forage jobs already without adding more.
if you don't feel we have enough forage jobs, you aren't doing any of them.
Imagine if PC soldiers only got paid when they made an arrest, or if PC weaponcrafters only got paid when they sold to a PC. This is the problem the service jobs face. I don't want to virtualize their whole job, just enough of it so they can continue to play that role despite a low PC customer population.
Another way to look at it is to say, would you rather have a PC housecleaner out foraging salt to make ends meet, or would you rather have them able to sit in the tavern (where they might actually find non-virtual work), because they got paid enough to eat for some work they did virtually the night before?
pc soldiers work for an organization that pays them a stipend. if you want to be a whore, there's an organization open to you that probably pays you a stipend.
I agree with Lizzie. The simplest solution is to just whore more; there would have to be a conscious choice on the player's part to engage in those kinds of activities, but that goes with most things. You can fade the sex part, but engage in the activity and RP. Spend those hoarded coins!
That's great. Now, what if you want to be an independent whore? Or a dentist? Or a florist? Or a mural painter? There are a thousand possible roles people might want to play in this role playing game that aren't feasible under the current conditions (without becoming a dentist/salter/occasional poopsmith). Would you like to help them play those roles?
Edit: I was responding to Cabbage.
How about:
Subclass: Professional
Description: You have skills that earn you enough coin to get by, but that aren't represented in the coded reality of the game. You might be in construction, whoring, cleaning, farming or any number of other occupations that have no coded skill attached to them.
Skills: Scant, maybe none at all.
Special Abilities: You do not need to eat or drink while you are in a populated area.
Quote from: Narf on November 30, 2017, 07:38:09 PM
How about:
Subclass: Professional
Description: You have skills that earn you enough coin to get by, but that aren't represented in the coded reality of the game. You might be in construction, whoring, cleaning, farming or any number of other occupations that have no coded skill attached to them.
Skills: Scant, maybe none at all.
Special Abilities: You do not need to eat or drink while you are in a populated area.
These are the creative solutions i'm looking for. I think even reducing this allows for people to struggle to survive in a more RP centric way (despite what Lizzie may assert).
Quote from: James de Monet on November 30, 2017, 06:36:35 PM
Imagine if PC soldiers only got paid when they made an arrest.
Bad example, as you don't get paid for an IG year in many soldier and merc jobs.
Quote from: Grogerif on November 30, 2017, 09:25:23 PM
Quote from: James de Monet on November 30, 2017, 06:36:35 PM
Imagine if PC soldiers only got paid when they made an arrest.
Bad example, as you don't get paid for an IG year in many soldier and merc jobs.
You get paid in food and water, which is really all a laborer would need since they don't have much requirement for fancy armor.
Quote from: Narf on November 30, 2017, 07:38:09 PM
How about:
Subclass: Professional
Description: You have skills that earn you enough coin to get by, but that aren't represented in the coded reality of the game. You might be in construction, whoring, cleaning, farming or any number of other occupations that have no coded skill attached to them.
Skills: Scant, maybe none at all.
Special Abilities: You do not need to eat or drink while you are in a populated area.
I like this. Maybe modify Special Abilities to "You do not need to eat or drink while you are in a populated area so long as you're not a member of a clan". On the assumption that once you're employed by a clan, your work will go toward them.
Quote from: Grogerif on November 30, 2017, 09:25:23 PM
Quote from: James de Monet on November 30, 2017, 06:36:35 PM
Imagine if PC soldiers only got paid when they made an arrest.
Bad example, as you don't get paid for an IG year in many soldier and merc jobs.
That isn't a situation where the character is only recompensed for non-virtual work. They are indeed being paid, just not in coin initially (as Narf points out), and it is only temporary.
yeah, but they still have to go to a pc, or an npc in extreme cases, to get hired like that.
what i'm saying is that what you're doing is creating a situation where a pc does not have to approach someone to find gainful employment, or rp, for something that is inherently based on rp.
Once again, the intent being advanced is not for the susbsistence amount to be their whole income. It is intended to bridge the gap between what an average PC service worker makes, and what it actually takes for a PC to live. It is intended to allow them MORE opportunities to RP with other PCs in their chosen role (by obviating their need to maintain a second career to live), not fewer.
Add a subguild with the skill Sex. Command fade or sex.
Use on Npcs, they pay you for sex. Only usable on some Npcs. (not all npcs are interested in paying for sex) And vary the difficulty, failure means no payment or less. Npcs will also only do it every couple of days, or even longer. No substitute for Pcs, but maybe just enough to get by.
Likely a bit of work, but it's an idea.
Once again - the VNPC whores are visiting VNPC customers and getting paid virtual pay for virtual work. VNPC whores -never- visit PC customers, don't interfere or compete with the business of PC whores.
If your whore isn't getting paid by other PCs, it's because whoring isn't a very attractive profession for either the whore or the other PCs. That doesn't mean anyone needs to create a whole set of code just to accommodate the few players who want to play virtual whores who get paid coded sids for performing work for virtual customers. It just means players need to either a) suddenly find hiring PC whores to be a more attractive option or b) stop playing PC whores.
It's on the players, not the coders, to "find a need and fill it." Obviously there isn't much of a need, because if there were the players of whores wouldn't be complaining that they can't find a non-virtual customer base that can sustain them with non-virtual coins.
I really don't see much difference at all between someone typing 'forage', 'forage', 'forage' ad infinitum, someone typing 'use axe tree', 'use axe tree', ad infinitum, and someone typing 'solicit', 'solicit', ad infinitum in a designated bawdy house or tavern. Except that 'solicit' would allow a would-be whore play a whore instead of a lumberjack or grebber or dung collector that happens to whore out on the side once in a while.
Make 'solicit' a whore subguild skill if there's concern everyone would start doing it. Make the outcome contingent on age and location as well as skill (which represents self-presentation and an eye for client selection). Have the character be rejected and thrown out if his or her clothing isn't fine enough (e.g. in the Red's). Have some drunken mercenary throw a mug at the whore if failing the skill check (takes some damage or clothing gets stained). Have there be a risk soldiers will haul the whore to jail if she or he doesn't have a merchant's token. Have the solicit code choose from a number of different little stories upon success. Have the whore learn it's a good idea to carry some spare clothing in case the client is the sort that likes to tear clothing away rather than undo buttons.
There's potential for this to be fun and novel here, not just support for a tricky role play choice.
Removing the need to eat for these PCs would mean they can avoid poisoning. It would be a massive benefit imho.
There would have to be an greatly increased chance for bad consequences, like disease.
Quote from: Narf on November 30, 2017, 07:38:09 PM
Subclass: Professional
Description: You have skills that earn you enough coin to get by, but that aren't represented in the coded reality of the game. You might be in construction, whoring, cleaning, farming or any number of other occupations that have no coded skill attached to them.
Skills: Scant, maybe none at all.
I like this proposal. In light of some of the objections (about poisoning, etc.), you might have the Special Abilities be simply:
"Receives [RANGE] coins per IG month from a virtual source, provided you have not joined a clan."
The RANGE would have to be something to fuss about (less than what a clanned member on the payroll makes, enough to get by, mostly). I want it to be a range so that there are good months and bad months. If you have coins you can then get robbed or poisoned. If you join a clan, you cannot double dip.
The neat thing about making this a 'subguild' option is that it would be a trade-off: instead of getting skills you basically get a minimal income. For those who want to play flavor roles like this, that might be exactly the trade off you are looking for.
You could require people who choose this subguild to include in their background the specifics of how they are making money (working at a virtual bar, working at a virtual cheese stall, etc.), but I don't think it would need to be policed, a room you have to stand in and type a command in over and over, or even that there need to be an NPC you go to to receive your pay-out: it just goes to your account. (Or at least it would work like current clan paymasters, if that is codedly easier.)
I'm tempted to play a prostitute or a courtesan just to see how doable it is. I feel like supporting yourself in one of these roles comes down to RP though.
Rather than supporting this with code that will only lead to players doing random time wasting task #8, why not push for a brothel? Hello MMH idea! No, seriously why isn't there a brothel space in Allanak? A brothel with some kind of STRUCTURE that facilitates that kind of RP, one with a madame or whatever a male manager of a cat house is called. That way if you want to play that kind of role, you have a real space that facilitates it, a space that provides for food and shelter.
See, to me the game could use a money sink like that. It has to be a thing that players consciously decide to support though.
I'd rather see an addition like that.
I think the reality of this sort of role is that most players of lower ranking PCs aren't willing to let their few sid go for it, and most the wealthier PCs have enough sex RP for free. I've seen a lot of good whore PCs get started but not stick around long, I've seen a couple make it work for awhile. I've seen efforts to start a bordello/pimp network on several occasions but those also don't seem to succeed. It's inherently a dangerous job, going places alone with strangers, as it should be.
I don't think code can fix any of those problems.
There isn't a city PC in the game who does not benefit in a non-virtual way from the virtual economy. Nobles? Where does all that money come from? They certainly aren't generating that much wealth. It has to do with virtual value created by their house. Crafters? You really think PCs are buying every ivory hair needle they're creating? No. But NPCs still buy them, because they sell to other, virtual customers. Clanned people? Where do those salaries come from? From virtual customers, tax payers, shops, trade deals, etc. And every salaried, clanned individual is getting paid directly for virtual work they did. You can tell, because one guy is logged in 4 hours a day and another 4 hours a week. They get paid the same. So either one guy gets paid more, ICly, or he's getting paid for virtually being there. Until you are logged in 24/7, you would always be getting paid for virtual work, because somebody else could be doing more non-virtual work than you, and get paid the same. Why is it so offensive to suggest that RP-based service jobs should maybe get to dip their hand in that pot also?
Quote from: James de Monet on December 01, 2017, 02:19:29 PM
There isn't a city PC in the game who does not benefit in a non-virtual way from the virtual economy. Nobles? Where does all that money come from? They certainly aren't generating that much wealth. It has to do with virtual value created by their house. Crafters? You really think PCs are buying every ivory hair needle they're creating? No. But NPCs still buy them, because they sell to other, virtual customers. Clanned people? Where do those salaries come from? From virtual customers, tax payers, shops, trade deals, etc. And every salaried, clanned individual is getting paid directly for virtual work they did. You can tell, because one guy is logged in 4 hours a day and another 4 hours a week. They get paid the same. So either one guy gets paid more, ICly, or he's getting paid for virtually being there. Until you are logged in 24/7, you would always be getting paid for virtual work, because somebody else could be doing more non-virtual work than you, and get paid the same. Why is it so offensive to suggest that RP-based service jobs should maybe get to dip their hand in that pot also?
I think it is part of the same blowback that these coded jobs created initially. Adding in methods to generate currency without PC interaction is "bad". It detracts from PC-on-PC roleplay. Why would they allow people to be "solo"?
Its all been heard before. Its alright to be questioning about it, but the simple point is there is a role in the game that is considered "almost too hard" because it requires solely on an active playerbase interested in your roleplay offerings.
Quote from: Lizzie on December 01, 2017, 06:32:23 AM
Once again - the VNPC whores are visiting VNPC customers and getting paid virtual pay for virtual work. VNPC whores -never- visit PC customers, don't interfere or compete with the business of PC whores.
I will say that I wholly disagree with this. My PCs tend to visit virtual whores, and pay virtual (or sometimes real) coin for their efforts, and thus doesn't have a dire need to have sex with anything vaguely hole-shaped. So. Virtual whores are absolutely taking work.
Quote from: Riev on December 01, 2017, 02:46:54 PM
Quote from: Lizzie on December 01, 2017, 06:32:23 AM
Once again - the VNPC whores are visiting VNPC customers and getting paid virtual pay for virtual work. VNPC whores -never- visit PC customers, don't interfere or compete with the business of PC whores.
I will say that I wholly disagree with this. My PCs tend to visit virtual whores, and pay virtual (or sometimes real) coin for their efforts, and thus doesn't have a dire need to have sex with anything vaguely hole-shaped. So. Virtual whores are absolutely taking work.
There isn't some sort of hard line between the virtual and the PC world, Lizzie. PCs are allowed to - and should - incorporate vNPCs into their story.
If all these players are sending their PCs to virtual whores instead of PC whores, then there's the solution to the "problem" that doesn't exist. Or maybe that's the problem. If you think playing a PC whore is hard and needs a solution, then stop sending your PCs to virtual whores.
I still don't see a problem that needs to be fixed, and I don't see creating a virtual customer base for a PC whore with coded pay is a solution to anything at all.
There are also organizations outside of kurac that will pay whores. You know the one.
I've played a prostitute in the past, and I suppose she was a fairly well known one while she was alive.
There are a number of IC ways to boost clientele.
1. offer deals for first time customers
2. hang out in taverns, be available for rp
3. go to events and give freebies to people that seem influential
4. hire people icly to spread rumors about how good you are
5. use the boards to publicize
6. offer many types of services
7. go to parties and gathering at taverns, be available
8. find in's with groups
there are infinite options, you just have to be creative.
TIL clown who do tricks with balloons and whores are not so different after all.
I don't think anybody is offended by the suggestions presented. I don't see any indication of that in this thread. Really, subguild tailor or jeweler fixes this problem, no code needed.
What I did see was a reoccurring problem that this game faces; that is someone got frustrated with the game and left. The proposed solution was CODE IT! A total of two people disagreed with that line of thought. Code is not the answer to everything. Suggesting otherwise is not an offense, it's a simple truth. What's wrong with suggesting code is not the answer in this case? Nothing. What's wrong with offering an alternative to a coded solution in this case? Nothing either.
The way I'm looking at it is, if players decided to support and engage in flavor activities, this wouldn't be a problem. Adding a brothel ADDS plot potential in many ways. Adding code just adds a nice little string and tosses you a couple coins, really for spamming a command with the potential to be abused.
I'll put it another way. I remember a time the Byn didn't do anything. Want to know why? Because nobody hired them for anything. Somewhere along the line there was a big player push to hire them for anything. Make up shit for them to do. And people did! Nobody added code to pay the Byn people started hiring the Byn and now they're an integral part of the game. If staff did anything to the Byn the game would explode.
Why can't we make that same conscious choice with flavor roles? Honestly, if I was playing a role where I had to go somewhere and type Turn trick for ten minutes straight to get a ridiculously low amount of coins I would pass on that role. I would also pass on a role where I'm not being engaged in the role I'm presenting. So here, I'm playing a prostitute. In a game like this, I'm not only a prostitute, I'm a spy, I'm an information gatherer, I'm a spreader of misinformation, I'm an assassin, I'm a thief.
If other players choose not to engage me, I'm just bored and I'm going to log off and watch Netflix. Adding a command is not going to help that, because it doesn't address the problem: I wasn't engaged. That's up to other players.
Quote from: evilcabbage on November 30, 2017, 04:22:36 AM
or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.
As some of us have come to learn, clans are a good way, to ruin a perfectly good PC. Joining a clan, should never be a requirement, or necessity, for something that doesn't involved role sponsorship.
RE: whores are hard
All that is required, for someone to be successful as a whore, is the ability, to entertain another PC. That's it, that's all you need, to never want again. But, I should elaborate, on what that means.
Entertaining means, being able to keep up a conversation about nothing, or pick up a dying conversation by coming up with something else to talk about, or ask about, or bounce jokes around so people don't slip into, the dreaded idle zone. It means, going beyond being a face in the crowd, and not sticking to some safe, tired trope. It isn't enough, to write a desc that says you're hot, or to emote how hot you think your PC is, because that doesn't really matter if. Hot or not, if you're boring, you're boring.
I like attractive girls, but I'd drop her in a second, if she's not able to keep up with a conversation. I have lots of attractive options in my life, but most, if not all, of my longer lasting relationships, have been with people who are, being honest, strictly average. The one I miss most, would probably not catch many eyes, but is missed the most, because of the brilliance of her humor, and her honest eyes. The regret, is really, quite real.
This is, the situation of every PC in the game. They have tons, of super hot options, but are going to invest only in the ones, who they like to RP with. Being a 10 is less important, than being fun. I've found that, most, if not all whores, in Arm, are more focused on being a 10, showing they're a 10, than being an engaging character, that I would want to spend my playing time on.
Because that, is what you want. For people to spend their PLAY time, on your PC. Everyone is rich, but you will not see a 'sid of it, if they don't want to spend their time, with you. If you fail at whore, it's because you're too busy being focused, on the wrong things.
My first PC here, was not nearly as wealthy, as she should have been, because I never really figured out the tricks for making easy, fast cash, like everyone else. That, is no longer a problem I have, but it matters, because I was feeding, watering and paying a grungy, 'rinth whore/thug, when it wasn't really something that was in my PCs best interest. Especially since, we never sexed, because my PC thought she was gross, but cute, in a pitiable, three-footed puppy kind of way.
They were fun, interesting and different from the paint by numbers PCs that inhabits, most of the game, so that was worth the extra few minutes I had to spend, going out, to make the extra I needed, to be able to give them a little bit, too.
You don't need, a pay-me subguild, or special room, or an NPC, you just have to be INTERESTING, ORIGINAL and DIFFERENT from the idle-at-the-bar crowd. If people want to RP with you, they'll use the easiest option to do so, which for a whore, is to pay you for your attention.
Be interesting, be successful. It is not something, the code can do for you.
Whoring can be a guild. Bard. You're performing. Period. You want your pc to have a means you live in lean times? Work that shit into your background.
I'm against coded rewards that give pcs money.
Even the filthiest rinthi breed whore is gonna be able to get clients. Even if it's 50 sid a day. You don't need code for this.
Don't make me create a really disgusting whore and prove you all wrong. Seriously, don't.
Quote from: ShaLeah on December 01, 2017, 07:14:35 PM
Whoring can be a guild. Bard. You're performing. Period. You want your pc to hadn't a means you live in lean times? Work that shit into your background.
I'm against coded rewards that give pcs money.
Even the filthiest rinthi breed whore is gonna be able to get clients. Even if it's 50 sid a day. You don't need code for this.
Don't make me create a really disgusting whore and prove you all wrong. Seriously, don't.
You should! Bonus points for snaggleteeth!
Quote from: Hauwke on December 01, 2017, 07:35:17 PM
Quote from: ShaLeah on December 01, 2017, 07:14:35 PM
Whoring can be a guild. Bard. You're performing. Period. You want your pc to hadn't a means you live in lean times? Work that shit into your background.
I'm against coded rewards that give pcs money.
Even the filthiest rinthi breed whore is gonna be able to get clients. Even if it's 50 sid a day. You don't need code for this.
Don't make me create a really disgusting whore and prove you all wrong. Seriously, don't.
You should! Bonus points for snaggleteeth!
I'll make the bitch old and toothless ftw.
Subguild: Consort. Listen, sneak, brew, cooking. Let the player decide the rest.
I happen to agree with Vex. As a whore you aren't just selling sex, you're selling an experience. It requires creativity to get paid, I have no issues with this. Just like a role like, say, a Kadian Merchant, everything you sell have little to no coded value and are just props, you don't get sales by waiting for someone to ask (though you will, and expect to be swamped), but you sell an experience, same with any sales position really. IRL if you work at wal-mart, in the furniture department, you know your whole purpose in life is to sell people garbage. People are not fools, and they understand this too, and appreciate it when you show you appreciate their mental aptitude by saying, "Yes, this TV stand is a fucking piece of shit, but the box it comes in has magical powers to grant you riches." "Really?" "No, not really, but at least it'll hold up your TV until you spill something on it."
Or, glass shelves, jesus christ, "I think this would go great in my living room." "Really? Let me ask you something, do you have kids?" "Yeah, why?" "Because that horrible abomination, if I were a kid, would look like a ladder, could you imagine what would happen if it were to topple?" "Oh... OH! I didn't, I didn't consider that." "Yeah, well, now you did... it's your living room, choice is up to you, but, I'd personally be terrified by that possibility."
Like anything else, it's not "gimme gimme gimme", it's, "I give you an experience, and you pay me what you think that experience is worth. Let's not beat around the bush and act like we're not playing pretend here."
If you are a pc whore and can't make a living, then it is on you not the game. Beg, flirt, do what you have to do to survive. If your RP is bad then PCs are less likely to want to hire you, even if those pcs are going to fade to black anyway, because you aren't creating fun for those pcs through rp or what have you.
So yeah, you are selling an experience as Vex, Grapes and others said, 100%.
Or you could take a crafting subguild as your pc's hobby when business is slow. Or both!
Also people like you who play flavor roles are awesome, keep up the good work!
I really like the idea of an 'virtual job' subguild, where you just receive a small, semi-random amount of coins on a regular basis.
I played a rinth prostitute.
In that time she was bringing in 600-ish sid a day, involved in plots, got people killed, etc.
You really just gotta get out there. If you want to play a flavor character you can not be lazy about it.
Yes. people IC should be pushed to pay for pc whores, but you have to drive the rp.
Quote from: valeria on December 02, 2017, 08:15:30 AM
I really like the idea of an 'virtual job' subguild, where you just receive a small, semi-random amount of coins on a regular basis.
I heard it would squelch rp by eliminating the need to forage and spamcraft though.
Quote from: Narf on December 02, 2017, 03:15:50 PM
Quote from: valeria on December 02, 2017, 08:15:30 AM
I really like the idea of an 'virtual job' subguild, where you just receive a small, semi-random amount of coins on a regular basis.
I heard it would squelch rp by eliminating the need to forage and spamcraft though.
Brilliantly put.
I fail to see how that subguild would be more RP Game Breaking than a whore needing to craft or otherwise 'not be a whore' in order to make money. Then the whore can actually spend time RPing being a whore, getting virtual customers, being around and otherwise engaging as a whore PC. Rather than 'I make <item> on the side to make ends meet', as a required part of their story.
If you've seen the echos of people dying of thirst or starving in the streets, then yes, coin isn't as easy to come by as the player population is accustomed to. With a moderate amount of wisdom, a character would realize that they'll need to supplement the slow times, and maybe accept methods of payment that aren't coin. If you roll up ranger/gladiator and expect to be able to have your cake and eat it too, I'm unsure what to say to that, other than, it seems like you didn't do a lot of planning prior to submitting your character. I don't know, I never experienced any problems with it, and never had to go grebbing or crafting to make ends meet, but ymmv.''
You see, on the one hand, there's a group of people who already believe coins are too easy to make and ruin their immersion of trying to RP a poor PC. On the other hand, you have this. I don't particularly side with one group or the other, I will say that numerous "easy" jobs have been made harder, so it seems to me the wind is blowing a certain way. Most of the money-making sillyness can be figured out ICly by consulting characters who have a stake in your character. If no one has a stake in your character, an alternate approach may be worth considering. Playing a whore is completely viable, and if you do a good job you might have people dragging in materials and such as compensation for sexy-times which you can turn into coins, if you have crafting skills, because they're broke from spending all their coin on your fees.
I know, my experience isn't universal, and in fact, was quite unthinkable on the face of it, that last part is the important part. If you want to get paid for attendance, as others have pointed out, there are clans which will fulfil this need. If you don't want to play in a clan, then you just picked hard-mode, and hard-mode is there for people who want to give it a shot, not for people who want easy mode, which, if you ask me, is how it should be. Would I like to see more independant whores? Yes, definitely. I don't want the role watered down by free money, however.
I like the idea in theory of a subguild that represents a job and periodically gives you coins. There are a lot of jobs I've wanted to RP as (server at a tavern, sweeper, stablehand) that weren't really possible because I would have no way to actually get paid/survive doing them.
I do have to wonder, though. What happens if you pick this sub but end up getting a different job, or go off to live in the desert, or injure yourself so that you can no longer realistically perform the job, or any number of things? It wouldn't make much sense if you continued to receive the money anyway.
Quote from: sleepyhead on December 02, 2017, 04:23:19 PM
I like the idea in theory of a subguild that represents a job and periodically gives you coins. There are a lot of jobs I've wanted to RP as (server at a tavern, sweeper, stablehand) that weren't really possible because I would have no way to actually get paid/survive doing them.
I do have to wonder, though. What happens if you pick this sub but end up getting a different job, or go off to live in the desert, or injure yourself so that you can no longer realistically perform the job, or any number of things? It wouldn't make much sense if you continued to receive the money anyway.
Except you CAN be a server in the Gaj. You gather drinks for tables of people and they pay you tips for not having to walk to the bar and shout over crowds of other people wanting drinks. New character concept? Maybe. Do people need to pay you to do this? No, but nobody really needs to pay anyone for anything. If you clean the stables, sell the poop. There's some coins right there (and from a coded job, no less). Stablehand? Wish up to have a conversation with the current stablehand to be taken on as an apprentice, expect to be bored until afternoon and dawn. Engage people who enter the stables, ask if you can "get that for them", emote using a pick to clean sand out of beetle joints and feeding their mounts special, mount-appropriate treats, and explain, "I work for tips, you know? Your bug will push harder and further because of premium services.", doesn't mean it's true codedly, but how would they ICly know that?
Okay I get you, and maybe I've just been uncreative, but my individual examples weren't really the point. The point was to ask the people who do support a coin-giving subguild for people with flavor jobs how they'd suggest handling situations in which a character is no longer in a position to receive their stipend.
Quote from: sleepyhead on December 02, 2017, 04:48:36 PM
Okay I get you, and maybe I've just been uncreative, but my individual examples weren't really the point. The point was to ask the people who do support a coin-giving subguild for people with flavor jobs how they'd suggest handling situations in which a character is no longer in a position to receive their stipend.
My original suggestion was to eliminate hunger and thirst for those with the subguild while they were in the city. This might be easier to rp around.
From a gamist perspective though, if you've given up all of your subguild skills just to not have to worry about subsistence, I think you deserve to keep that.
Quote from: Narf on December 02, 2017, 05:01:02 PM
Quote from: sleepyhead on December 02, 2017, 04:48:36 PM
Okay I get you, and maybe I've just been uncreative, but my individual examples weren't really the point. The point was to ask the people who do support a coin-giving subguild for people with flavor jobs how they'd suggest handling situations in which a character is no longer in a position to receive their stipend.
My original suggestion was to eliminate hunger and thirst for those with the subguild while they were in the city. This might be easier to rp around.
From a gamist perspective though, if you've given up all of your subguild skills just to not have to worry about subsistence, I think you deserve to keep that.
On further reflection, what if city guilds had a "beg" function similar to forage, with the downside you might get kicked in the face on a crit-fail?
Quote from: sleepyhead on December 02, 2017, 04:23:19 PM
I do have to wonder, though. What happens if you pick this sub but end up getting a different job, or go off to live in the desert, or injure yourself so that you can no longer realistically perform the job, or any number of things? It wouldn't make much sense if you continued to receive the money anyway.
Maybe instead of loading the coins into your inventory or bank account, you had to access a pay PC (something along the lines of how you access the scargiver, in a semi-OOC area) and had to request your coins. That way, if you did any of these things, you'd simply just not use your subguild.
Or you could just be expected to not. You'd only choose not to have any other subguild for a flavor character, it could be explicitly stated that if you're choosing it, you're expected to RP doing your virtual job. It wouldn't be the only guild-based RP restriction that exists.
Ways to play a whore:
* Get loans
* Gamble
* Deal spice to clients
* Spy
* Give "freebies" to law enforcement to look the other way on anything illicit you do (such as deal drugs)
* Partner with a burglar and scope places out for a cut
* Accept non-monetary payment (I know I pay dounle or even triple if I don't pay in coin).
* Get sponsored by Dale
More code isn't necessary.
Quote from: John on December 03, 2017, 05:36:31 PM
Ways to play a whore:
* Get loans
* Gamble
* Deal spice to clients
* Spy
* Give "freebies" to law enforcement to look the other way on anything illicit you do (such as deal drugs)
* Partner with a burglar and scope places out for a cut
* Accept non-monetary payment (I know I pay dounle or even triple if I don't pay in coin).
* Get sponsored by Dale
More code isn't necessary.
Dale is a pimp with a heart of gold.
And if Dale won't say yes, check with House Fale
I also don't think more code is necessary, but it would be nice. Not just for whores, but other flavor roles. Tavern tenders, beggars, street sweepers, and the like.
A lot of the things you suggest are 'So you want to play a whore, have you thought about playing a criminal instead?' Which works for those whores who also want to play criminals, but not so much for people who want to have whore be their main profession.
The fundamental problem is that there are grind-sinks and grind-faucets, but the available automated grind-faucets are suitable only to certain roles.
We've already more-or-less accepted the existence of the sink-and-faucet paradigm. Adding new faucets for different sorts of roles is a perfectly acceptable fix in a game where sink-and-faucet and roleplay-required coexist.
Why don't we just create a PC and work toward such a goal (ie. brothel) IC? Player clans are more easily accessible now thanks to staff making it possible to actually create player clans.
Because it'll take a while.
Quote from: Kankfly on December 04, 2017, 09:52:58 PM
Why don't we just create a PC and work toward such a goal (ie. brothel) IC? Player clans are more easily accessible now thanks to staff making it possible to actually create player clans.
Quote from: Veselka on December 04, 2017, 10:14:34 PM
Because it'll take a while.
This. Its not that it ISN'T possible, its that a "player clan" needs to be capable of making an incredible amount of coin to pay of the right people, pay taxes, etc, before even getting to the point of a "Warehouse" or physical space that could even be reasonably used for such a venture.
In game, any such venture wouldn't last that long without someone bankrolling the entire thing (Noble sponsorship) or something that would end up not feeling like the PC in charge was really in charge. It is a change that would take something like 6 RL months on the same PC, doing the same RP around the same OTHER PCs that all have the goal or the comfort of being an in game whore for 6 RL months.
Its untenable and an unrealistic expectation. Its possible, but as a previous topic mentioned, two clans have gotten beyond owning a big warehouse, and one of them was a staff plot to introduce a new product in the game. So, a Player Clan whorehouse is likely only going to last as long as there is a PC willing to be a whore and if they die, the clan is dead. 6 hunters can get together and do fun stuff. 6 whores don't usually get together without it being a Fale party.
As someone else mentioned, while pursuing an MMH brothel or cheese shop or whatever is definitely an option for someone who wants to play a character who runs and owns a brothel or a cheese shop, the proposal on offer here with a 'Profession' sub-guild is for someone who wants to play a character who is an employee in some virtual brothel, cheese shop, bar, etc. These are paradigmatic flavor PCs, and I really like the proposal, to repeat (since it got pagerolled):
Quote
Subclass: Professional
Description: You have skills that earn you enough coin to get by, but that aren't represented in the coded reality of the game. You might be in construction, whoring, cleaning, farming or any number of other occupations that have no coded skill attached to them.
Skills: Scant, maybe none at all.
Special Abilities: You do not need to eat or drink while you are in a populated area and/or you receive a small stipend each month from a virtual or coded paymaster. Some qualifications would apply: you would forfeit the stipend if you join a clan, for instance.
My initial thought is that if our tag line is Harsh Desert Planet we don't need to make things easier for service industry professions. Having your drinks fetched and your jollies jollies is not at the base of the heirarchy of needs. If you make more as a provider of substance or protector that seems right thematically. I think the flavor roles are awesome, but if they're seasoned with hunger and dispare that's probably right.
Quote from: Riev on December 05, 2017, 09:39:34 AM
Its untenable and an unrealistic expectation. Its possible, but as a previous topic mentioned, two clans have gotten beyond owning a big warehouse, and one of them was a staff plot to introduce a new product in the game. So, a Player Clan whorehouse is likely only going to last as long as there is a PC willing to be a whore and if they die, the clan is dead. 6 hunters can get together and do fun stuff. 6 whores don't usually get together without it being a Fale party.
What? That's not even remotely true. Multiple clans have gotten warehouses, and exactly zero of them were staff plots that got new products into the game. Which is what was stated in another thread. It's also not very hard to get a warehouse (or other building in lieu of a warehouse). It costs a minimum of 3500 coins, which isn't quite as much as you think once you start hiring people to make you money.
Also it takes ~45 days for a player clan to get a warehouse if they're sending in regular reports and letting us know what's going on. Not six months.
My numbers were exaggerated, yes, but I said "BEYOND" owning a warehouse. Plenty of people, as you've stated, have gotten to the Warehouse stage but it seems they mysteriously stop or don't get beyond that point.
~45 days, with regular reports. Is that from Character Creation, or from the time they've established an idea/created a product/identified a need in game? Because if you're a merchant, selling New Fiddly-Doos, you need to spend at least 30days between grinding the skill and mastercrafting an item. If you're providing a service, it takes more than 0-days to establish yourself as a provider of that service.
So. Yes. My numbers are exaggerated, but yours seem a bit biased as well. 45 days to get a warehouse, give or take, from the time a PC is in a position to start requesting.
From the time you start down the player clan path, as can be seen in the helpfile HELP PLAYER-CREATED CLANS.
http://armageddon.org/help/view/Player-Created%20Clans
Yes. What I'm saying (and its for another thread) is that "it only takes 45 days" is a bit of an incorrect phrase, because it only takes 45 days once you're in a position to start the journey.
So. No. It doesn't take 4 months to start the journey. As I admitted, my numbers were exaggerated. However, it doesn't take a month and a half to get a warehouse, either. Its somewhere in the middle.
You're wrong. You can start right out if char gen. All it takes is a request that says "I want to start the player clan process with X in mind," and you need to ICly register with the powers that be.
I've been a part of this process and it's essentially painless. It takes all of 5 minutes OOC to start the process.
If I wanted to start a new PC and get a warehouse in ~45 days, I have no doubt I could do it (barring IC circumstances).
I too have started the process out of chargen with the 45 day aim. (I died on day 43. Sue me.)
One thing that might be tripping you up, Riev, here, is that you don't need the cash for the warehouse until that 45 day point, so you have 45 days from chargen to build up those skills and contacts and so on and make the cash to pay off the templar / rinthers or whoever at that 45 day mark.
Even so, the profession sub-guild being discussed is more of a niche role for someone not interested in making a warehouse or company, but interested in playing a flavor role employee to a virtual boss, etc. (As mentioned.)
I have to admit. I'm reeeeeally super interested in attempting something like this. I still think it would be better served as something staff created, like the Dust Runners. I can't believe it's something people would want to play all the time, yet it has the potential to be something extremely powerful. Something like this would be doable with 5 or 6 pcs that were committed to making it real and it would probably need something more than a family rollcall and a killer of prostitutes would show up at some point. One of the pitfalls of a player created house would be that it would need someone or something's support at least initially. That's how corruption works, a little quid pro quo.
In a world of murder, corruption and betrayal...*record skips*
Actually, I think in a world like zalanthas particularly a city like Allanak a cathouse would thrive. Historically they always have existed and existed even in places where the sex trade doesn't exist like the Middle East and really harsh bleak places as well. People may be poor and desperate, but they tend to find money for things like that.
Yeah....I've been reading up on this. The most important thing is does staff think something like that has a place in the world?
Quote from: Barzalene on December 05, 2017, 10:12:45 AM
I think the flavor roles are awesome, but if they're seasoned with hunger and dispare that's probably right.
This. A million times this.(https://media1.tenor.com/images/08dbc559cc4f3e4363596ce6efe6388d/tenor.gif?itemid=4119784)
Quote from: Riev on December 05, 2017, 09:39:34 AM
Quote from: Kankfly on December 04, 2017, 09:52:58 PM
Why don't we just create a PC and work toward such a goal (ie. brothel) IC? Player clans are more easily accessible now thanks to staff making it possible to actually create player clans.
Quote from: Veselka on December 04, 2017, 10:14:34 PM
Because it'll take a while.
So, a Player Clan whorehouse is likely only going to last as long as there is a PC willing to be a whore and if they die, the clan is dead.
Is Tor dead? Is Valika dead? Is Voryek dead? Just because an established/licensed/permitted doesn't have PCs it doesn't mean the clan dies. How many times have there been role calls? How many times has Tor closed? Most (MOST) of the documented Houses do NOT have players running them. If a player succeeded in starting this kind of place and it comes with buildings and docs and such there's no reason to have it shut down like it never existed.
In MY opinion the fact that we do NOT have a clan supporting the 'sexual' mentality on Arm is one of the reasons why whore characters have it hard and are shamed.
Quote from: LucildaHunta on December 05, 2017, 11:50:50 AM
I have to admit. I'm reeeeeally super interested in attempting something like this.
Quote from: nauta on December 05, 2017, 11:49:54 AM
I too have started the process out of chargen with the 45 day aim. (I died on day 43. Sue me.)
Quote from: ShaLeah on November 30, 2017, 01:30:38 PM
We need a clan to support this. It's one of the things I've wanted to change in the gameworld because until there's a clan for it there doesn't seem to be a player supported mindset.
Quote from: Akariel on December 05, 2017, 01:03:49 PM
Please keep images SFW.
Guess the below images aren't so SFW! Consider yourselves warned before clicking!
https://media.giphy.com/media/BFUcLd6fk1Us0/giphy.gif (https://media.giphy.com/media/BFUcLd6fk1Us0/giphy.gif)
Let's make it happen. Ginka's Angels right here.
https://media.giphy.com/media/21wShClZnL4KQ/giphy.gif (https://media.giphy.com/media/21wShClZnL4KQ/giphy.gif)
Please keep images SFW.
Shaleah ....you are evil! I think this is a much more interesting hill to die on than the one I'm currently dying on.
Quote from: LucildaHunta on December 05, 2017, 01:07:26 PM
Shaleah ....you are evil! I think this is a much more interesting hill to die on than the one I'm currently dying on.
I have docs. Just sayin'.
I don't feel particularly strongly about this idea, but I lean slightly towards the negative as far as more subsistence work; we already have subsistence work in place, and as far as early survival, I view that as the exact same struggle anyone who's non-clanned goes through.
The recurring trend with my unclanned PC's is struggling to make ends meet and 'become relavent' until the big break happens. Sometimes, the big break is as simple as unlocking a certain skill that is, in and of itself, capable of giving you continued sustenance. More often, it comes through a social connection that suddenly opens a lot of doors and 'opens' the social/political world, and all the opportunities contained therein.
Often, this fails. You're forced into risks to survive. And I actually love that, and think it's a great part of the game...it's just that sometimes, it doesn't pan out and you don't survive, or survival pushes you into some things that you didn't plan on and changes your role. And that's A-OK for me.
I think that ultimately the pushback against having a faucet that's amenable to sex-work roles largely has to do with the perceived low risk:reward ratio of the proposed faucets (more about that, later), and to a lesser extent the idea that people who would -like- to play these roles (RP-heavy) don't want to feel like they're playing within a sink-faucet construct (even though a "pure" service role like this is plumbing taking advantage of high-output faucets tailored to other roles).
At this point, you cannot make an honest argument about risk:reward ratio of a resource faucet for sex work, because no particular system with a firm set of variables from which you could make predictions about risk:reward has been proposed. Really, all you can do is shake your fist against the faucet-sink paradigm (which is pointless, because all available evidence indicates that it isn't going away).
The faucet could be adjusted such that the risk:reward ratio is in-line with other available subsistence-level faucets. You can argue about what parameters would yield that result, but hyperbolic arguments about a particular faucet eliminating struggle and risk are either disingenuous or ill-considered.
I think the best starting point (even though we're now 4 pages into the discussion) isn't pro/con--it's to outline the types of risks and rewards, and how they could be adjusted, because the only "con" argument that has any value at the moment is the purely opinion-based "automated resource faucets are shit" argument.
Risks:
1. Getting mugged/shaken down
2. Venereal disease
3. Opportunity cost of more lucrative endeavors (i.e. time)
4. Non-skill-based, so you aren't getting better at anything on your skill sheet
Rewards:
1. Coins
2. Indoor location (less thirst loss)
3. Central location, so you're easier for other PCs to find for other employment
Yeah, where's the virtual pimp to collect your sid? It's kinda like a clan pay NPC, but he instead stalks you like Twitchy demanding his monthly due. If you miss 2x in a row he saps you next time you're in the street at night.
One thing I noticed playing a whore is that the meta-economics of the game tend to drive you toward the mid to upper-class reaches of social strata. Here's bit of Whore Economics 101, based again on my personal experience. Disclaimer: YMMV, I'm sure some people were able to pull this off over the years. But in general, it feels like you either hit a point where you need to pick up a second source of income because whoring doesn't pay it, or you need to become a classy whore.
There's a limited pool of PCs in the city at any one time who could be potential clients. Typically any one PC won't want to hire/pay you every single RL day, so you need multiple paying clients to support your needs like food/water/apartment. The kind of PCs that you would think would want to hit you up for a quick 50-100 sid kank are also the kind of PCs that don't always have money to spend on you. It usually takes a bit of time investment just to land a PC client, and then depending on if that PC wants the full monte or is fine with a fade, it takes time to service them too. :P If you can't play at peak times, you'll have a harder time earning money than if you can. And so on. If you're making social connections, you don't always need to pay for food and water and such, but then you end up socially connected to PCs who can support you. Depending on who those patrons are, you may or may not end up inching up the ladder anyway based on your relationship with them.
All of this means that you could easily run into a situation where you're making less money per hour than your character needs to survive. If you're trying to play a low-class whore on the low end of the totem pole (i.e. your target market is Byn Runners and grebbers vs. aides and merchants), it could be tricky to find the right balance where you can make enough coin based on your profession to get by. Yet most of those factors are OOC ones based on the habits of PCs, and not IC ones based on the game world itself.
There could be more of a middle ground between whores aiming for low-class PCs and running on the borderline of starvation and inviability, or getting classy and aiming for PCs who can pay 200+ coins an engagement and thereby pay off your food and water bills. We know lower class whores and barmaids and so on exist based on frequent references in the setting, though. I'm guessing that most of those virtual people don't have to take up second jobs as a salt forager or dung scraper just to make ends meet.
So I'm in favor of some sort of sustainment faucet for lower-class social PCs. Something should allow PCs to earn enough off the virtual population to get by and not much more. Trading a subguild slot for a virtual social profession that earns you 50 coins an RL day seems like a fair trade that certainly won't get anybody ahead, but will make those roles more playable.
QuoteI'm guessing that most of those virtual people don't have to take up second jobs as a salt forager or dung scraper just to make ends meet.
I'm not really sure I like the justification of 'virtual population does this so I should be able to, too', particularly when it's on an assumption that the majority of them are getting by on only that in the first place.
However, as I said, I'm not exactly strongly against this, just...wary of that same old thing where I don't want survival to be easy enough that people avoid strife and risk because they don't need to do it.
Daily allowance of coins or just no need to eat or drink in cities while unclanned?
I favor the latter. It somewhat addresses peoples' concern about risk/reward. You're not risking, but you're not getting *any* reward beyond pure survival, and that's at the cost of subguild skills you could have had. You're still going to have to succeed with PCs in your flavor role to have anything at all, even just a bead anklet.
You could argue we already have this in game in a sense. When you're logged out, there's no risk and you don't have to pay for food/drink/shelter.
So why not just extend that to logged in times instead of forcing flavor role characters to log in only at the peak times they can earn a living? Instead of forcing them to do tricks like logging in, looking into a tavern, then logging out if few are there, just to save on costs?
The problem I foresee with a coin allowance is that casual players will log in once and a while and suddenly have a large in coins, whereas active players will barely get by.
Quote from: Armaddict on December 05, 2017, 03:46:38 PM
QuoteI'm guessing that most of those virtual people don't have to take up second jobs as a salt forager or dung scraper just to make ends meet.
I'm not really sure I like the justification of 'virtual population does this so I should be able to, too', particularly when it's on an assumption that the majority of them are getting by on only that in the first place.
Why not? If the virtual population is "only just" able to get by in a certain profession, I'd say make it possible and realistic for PCs to "only just" get by in the same way. Do you think it's an unrealistic assumption that bartenders can be just bartenders or whores can be just whores or crappy fortune tellers can be just crappy fortune tellers? I'd prefer to think of the game world in that way rather than assuming every commoner is taking up some kind of gathering or foraging or grebbing job on the side.
QuoteWhy not?
Because it's using presupposition. It's promoting an idea based off a lot of nothing.
For example. You're supposing that because the word 'prostitute' is in echoes, that such is their vocation by profession rather than by necessity. You're supposing that they -are- getting by off of it. You're supposing that it's not a cycling population represented by a generic echo. You're supposing that all of them have a sufficient clientele, and that none of them are suffering. You're supposing that none of them have to shift out into new avenues to make it work.
You're just supposing a whole lot of different things based off of room echoes. It's not really...that necessary. I mean...the whole reason that the struggle is there in the first place is supposedly because there's not a huge 'market' of players who want to indulge in that particular exchange of coin. So why create this support/backing for it? Just so people can say they're a whore or prostitute? Just because you read some echoes and decided it shouldn't be tough to pull off as a result?
Edit: Again. If it gets put in, I'm not going to flip out about it. It's not game-breaking. But I -am- curious if this is indicative of the direction that people want to move into. Does this spread over into other virtual professions as well? Do burglars gain virtual apartments to profit from? Do muggers gain virtual marks to stalk? Do we allow for the virtual income of whoring to yield no result, indicating a lack of payment and thus, a rape? Should soldiers be able to forage for virtual criminals? Further on, do we use virtuality and flavor echoes throughout the game as backbones for arguments of content for the PC population from here on out?
We have built in systems that allow for scrounging by. Some are more risky than others, but they are base-level actions that can, at least somewhat, provide for the PC economy. If we start moving up the 'levels' of non-contributory income, where exactly are we planning on stopping?
Not getting hung up on the individual profession of whore/prostitute might open up a different angle of thinking.
Let's start from a premise of: "Is _____ a profession that does/should exist in the game, is it thematic and appropriate for PCs, and does it have coded support to make it viable?"
Most hunting, gathering, crafting, fighting, and thieving professions check all those boxes already. Burglars don't need a hand up surviving because they're plenty viable as they are today. Muggers have plenty of PCs and NPCs to mug. No further support is needed to realize the virtual world in order to support those roles.
Consider if you pulled out the salting/clay foraging/dung sweeping code back out of the game, though. It would be much more difficult for PCs to subsist and play the role of a true honest-to-god grebber, because the game wouldn't reward them for grebbing and they need some sort of income or support to survive. So anyone trying to roleplay a "grebber" would have to turn to something else, like hunting, to support themselves. Soon your longer-lived "grebbers" would end up pretty good hunters by virtue of having to codedly do that while roleplaying a grebber, even if all they wanted to do was play a dirty old grebber.
We know grebbers should exist in the game by virtue of plenty of echoes, documentation, room descriptions, npcs and other thematic elements. Furthermore, we want them to exist, because it's a role that helps personify the risk and struggle and harsh life to get by in Zalanthas. So it makes sense to let players play a PC as a grebber if that's what they want, and the coded systems allow you some help getting by while you do that.
Now again, consider barmaids, fortune tellers, street performers, nursemaids, tattooists, whores, and so on - these are all "service" professions that we know exist in the world, are in theme, and are plenty common based on npcs, room echoes, descriptions etc -- definitely more than "a lot of nothing". Whether these professions can get by solely on their trade alone or whether they're suffering or not, they exist, and it's difficult for PCs to play them without having to become something else too. They should still struggle, but it's certainly possible to devise a system that supports these roles existing in some way while still struggling, vs. the difficulty of today which is closer to "nonviable" than it is to "struggle".
Do we want to allow those kinds of small-time common social roles to be viable in the game? Why not? It'd be nice to see more plain ol' common folk and not have to assume they're supporting themselves via theft or spying or worse. In the same way playing a grebber helps personify the harsh struggle of surviving in the wilderness, playing a city-based social role helps personify that a good chunk of the people living in Allanak are just city commoners who live common lives in the city and plenty have never even been beyond the gates at all. It closes the gap between what we see happening in the V/NPC world, and what we as players can live out as PCs. Allowing for more common-ness so that all the social roles aren't clustered toward the higher end of the spectrum is a good thing, isn't it?
QuoteNow again, consider barmaids, fortune tellers, street performers, nursemaids, tattooists, whores, and so on - these are all "service" professions that we know exist in the world, are in theme, and are plenty common based on npcs, room echoes, descriptions etc -- definitely more than "a lot of nothing".
Well. When I say a 'whole lot of nothing', what I'm saying isn't that things don't exist. They do. But the translation from the vNPC realm into the PC realm comes with a lot of assumptions about just how 'static' those people actually are, or whether they are as I said...a reference to the game setting that provides backdrop and atmosphere, but not necessarily the basis of 'the code should make this completely easy for you to do, as well'.
In the end, that -is- what I think is being talked about. People can and have done some of the things from that list. Sometimes, they were prominent enough to make money at it. Other times, it was a side thing.
If people want to play those things, that's well and good. But I don't consider it particularly contributory, either...unless it -is- truly a side thing, and they have things more involved going on the side. In essence...a fortune teller who just sits and tells fortunes might very well be able to subsist purely off of telling fortunes. But that doesn't...really bring much...to the game, for a player to be doing that; I'd -assume- that they are involved in other things on the side beyond just that and bar-banter, and those other things, I will also assume, bring meat to the game. If it brings meat to the game, it probably brings meat to their table as well.
This is purely my own perspective on people playing purely-flavor roles. No, I would not deny people the ability to do that, which is why I'm not -strongly- against it. Just kinda really 'meh' on it. Like I was trying to imply with my question...it's kind of a move towards people playing flavor roles in a bubble that they don't need to leave. Grebbers, and your other examples, have the bonus of providing content to crafters and items for shops and that at least minimal contribution to the actions of others. It's great that you want to play out what vNPC's do (kind of)...but generally speaking, I consider PC's to be the -potential- real stories amid a backdrop of things you really wouldn't want to read about for very long.
I'll go ahead and stop posting about it, because I'm not trying to shut the idea down as much as I'm a little stranged out by the desire to facilitate a means for characters to remain 'just there' characters, as opposed to 'just there' characters that over time are morphed into characters forced by hardship to engage in other things that help, hinder, or involve other players.
To me, the 'just there' characters were perfect as NPC and vNPC backdrops; PCs, generally, I assume we all want to be a little more involved in the goings-on of the world. A dung sweeper that emotes (or in this case, a prostitute that mingles and contributes basically by saying they're a prostitute) might say 'mucho kudos!' to you, but to me, that's just player time that could be spent creating or contributing to content and things for players to do.
I think giving players more freedom to roleplay as they might like is plenty contribution enough. It brings interaction, which keeps players engaged; it brings the world to life, which keeps players immersed. A player doesn't contribute more or less to the game just by virtue of playing one role over another; they just contribute by playing in an engaging way period.
Quote from: Armaddict on December 05, 2017, 07:26:58 PM
I'll go ahead and stop posting about it, because I'm not trying to shut the idea down as much as I'm a little stranged out by the desire to facilitate a means for characters to remain 'just there' characters, as opposed to 'just there' characters that over time are morphed into characters forced by hardship to engage in other things that help, hinder, or involve other players.
To me, the 'just there' characters were perfect as NPC and vNPC backdrops; PCs, generally, I assume we all want to be a little more involved in the goings-on of the world. A dung sweeper that emotes (or in this case, a prostitute that mingles and contributes basically by saying they're a prostitute) might say 'mucho kudos!' to you, but to me, that's just player time that could be spent creating or contributing to content and things for players to do.
The idea that there will be some PC that routinely does nothing except idle in the resource-faucet whorehouse and collect crumbs is a total joke. Presenting it as a counterargument is a straw man presented as
reductio ad absurdum. Nobody is going to sit there and "contribute nothing" over the long term.
The proper counterargument would be to question the necessity of grinding for basic shit in the first place.
QuoteThe idea that there will be some PC that routinely does nothing except idle in the resource-faucet whorehouse and collect crumbs is a total joke. Presenting it as a counterargument is a straw man presented as reductio ad absurdum. Nobody is going to sit there and "contribute nothing" over the long term.
The proper counterargument would be to question the necessity of grinding for basic shit in the first place.
Then you missed the argument. The argument isn't so much 'If you do this, everyone will do nothing.'
It's 'why would you incentivize or facilitate doing nothing?' When we're all in agreement that there are plenty of ways to go about making coin without a standard 'I have virtual customers' check, then questioning implementing it so that people don't have to do those other things is not...SYNTHESIS ABSURDUS. Ha! Take -that- argument language to the face.
Edit: No, but seriously. I already talked it to death with other posters in discord to the point of feeling pretty comfortable that we talked over the points. If it goes in, it goes in, I'm not claiming this is a game breaker or something. I just think it's kind of a weird direction to remove some of the built-in drive to be involved in other things, and in the case we don't think that's going to happen (i.e. That's absurd, they'll do things the same way as now), I don't see the reason for it in the first place.
I think trading off your subguild so that you can play a flavor role to the hilt of that flavor is the exact opposite of an incentive.
Quote from: Armaddict on December 06, 2017, 06:43:40 AM
QuoteThe idea that there will be some PC that routinely does nothing except idle in the resource-faucet whorehouse and collect crumbs is a total joke. Presenting it as a counterargument is a straw man presented as reductio ad absurdum. Nobody is going to sit there and "contribute nothing" over the long term.
The proper counterargument would be to question the necessity of grinding for basic shit in the first place.
Then you missed the argument. The argument isn't so much 'If you do this, everyone will do nothing.'
It's 'why would you incentivize or facilitate doing nothing?' When we're all in agreement that there are plenty of ways to go about making coin without a standard 'I have virtual customers' check, then questioning implementing it so that people don't have to do those other things is not...SYNTHESIS ABSURDUS. Ha! Take -that- argument language to the face.
Edit: No, but seriously. I already talked it to death with other posters in discord to the point of feeling pretty comfortable that we talked over the points. If it goes in, it goes in, I'm not claiming this is a game breaker or something. I just think it's kind of a weird direction to remove some of the built-in drive to be involved in other things, and in the case we don't think that's going to happen (i.e. That's absurd, they'll do things the same way as now), I don't see the reason for it in the first place.
No, I didn't miss the argument. A properly-implemented resource faucet is not an incentive to do nothing except logging in
qua logging in, which is the argument you repeatedly make. I disagree strongly that "hardship" is what "forces" PCs to "engage." To rephrase the terms of your
reductio: the idea that we'd all just log in and act like NPCs if we had infinite coins in our bank accounts is absurd.
I didn't say you said "everyone will do nothing." I said it's hyperbolic to propose that even -some- people will do nothing. I guarantee you that every* sex-work PC who utilizes a properly-implemented** sex-work subsistence-level automated resource faucet will only use it as a springboard to be involved in other things, because the ENTIRE POINT of the game is to be involved in other things.
Not that I feel particularly strongly about it being implemented, because I typically don't engage in sexual or even romantic roleplay. It's just that, as a matter of fairness, I understand that even though I'd personally rather type "forage salt" 100x a day than sit in the Gaj and flirt, there are other folks who enjoy exactly the opposite, and the game is big enough for both.
*I leave open the remote possibility that there exists some player of this game with OCD or the like who purely gains enjoyment from watching the numbers in their bank account increase.
**Where "properly-implemented" means "it allows the PC to subsist without resorting to activities that would be out of character."
I just wanted to say I love people who play flavor roles, and if you want to sacrifice subguild for a role that means you don't get hungry in the city, I am 100% fine with that. Literally nothing will be hurt by that.
I too love flavor roles, but I disagree that nothing would be hurt. I think the game needs more hunger and desperation, not less. This is especially true for roles whose nature is to be hungry and desperate. Unless it you mean that once your hunger or thirst became near fatal you'd get a half cup of dirty water and a stale piece of bread or a cockroach to eat in exchange for your subguilds. Of course one would lose hitpoints along the way. what with living in desperate poverty.
Quote from: Barzalene on December 06, 2017, 02:47:35 PM
I too love flavor roles, but I disagree that nothing would be hurt. I think the game needs more hunger and desperation, not less. This is especially true for roles whose nature is to be hungry and desperate. Unless it you mean that once your hunger or thirst became near fatal you'd get a half cup of dirty water and a stale piece of bread or a cockroach to eat in exchange for your subguilds. Of course one would lose hitpoints along the way. what with living in desperate poverty.
I'd be down with that.
Subguild: ProfessionTrade-off: no coded skills (unlike other subguilds).
Reward: Every X days you receive a stale piece of bread, a cockroach, and a half cup of dirty water, and 10-20 sid.
After all, a butcher's assistant, a petty baker, or a fortuneteller in Allanak isn't making that much; whatever they get as the 'reward' should be roughly half (if that) of what a clanned employee gets.
One point that has come up worth emphasizing is that those of us who like playing flavor roles and who know the 'tricks' can survive just fine, but we have to do things against our character to do so. So for instance, if I wanted to just be a poor southsider Allanaki human who works as a butcher's assistant, who never leaves the gates, and never goes in the rinth, my options to survive
as a butcher's assistant are nothing. Sure I could beg. Sure I could go to crime. Sure I could scrape dung. (And maybe I would to supplement my income or on those really bad days when the boss ain't paying.) But I couldn't survive while remaining in character as a butcher's assistant. (Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
The profession sub-guild would allow new players who wanted to play flavor roles but don't know the 'tricks' to make mad coin to do so more easily (they'd still struggle to survive and be poor), and it would allow more experienced players to focus on playing a flavor role and remain in character while doing so.
I do not think you get to retcon things that happen IG. What if someone hidden saw you, for example? If you were stripping bodies in the rinth then you were ICly stripping bodies in the rinth.
Quote from: sleepyhead on December 06, 2017, 03:34:32 PM
I do not think you get to retcon things that happen IG. What if someone hidden saw you, for example? If you were stripping bodies in the rinth then you were ICly stripping bodies in the rinth.
Thats exactly the point, why would a guy whose entire job is cutting critters, be in the 'rinth stripping guys and selling clothes?
Quote from: sleepyhead on December 06, 2017, 03:34:32 PM
I do not think you get to retcon things that happen IG. What if someone hidden saw you, for example? If you were stripping bodies in the rinth then you were ICly stripping bodies in the rinth.
I agree... but, what?
The point is that at present in order to play a southside Allanaki butcher's assistant, you have to do things that a butcher's assistant wouldn't do. The sub-guild profession would allow us to not do things that butcher's assistants qua butcher's assistants wouldn't do, things that are out of character for a butcher's assistant to do. (We can still do those if we like, but we wouldn't have to.)
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
No. A veteran player will know better than retconning something you do ig because it's meta and twinking.
What happened ig, happened ig. There's no retconning.
If you're poor and starving, you're poor and starving. Why do you need sids to "fall back" on?
Quote from: Kankfly on December 06, 2017, 05:15:36 PM
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
No. A veteran player will know better than retconning something you do ig because it's meta and twinking.
What happened ig, happened ig. There's no retconning.
If you're poor and starving, you're poor and starving. Why do you need sids to "fall back" on?
You need sids so that your character does not die, and at present there's no way to get sids just performing the day-to-day tasks that a butcher's assistant would perform, so you would have to resort to non-butcher-assistant tasks, such as salting, body grebbing, dung scraping, joining a clan, and so on. I'm sort of confused where this talk of 'retcon' is coming from... when I say the actions are 'out of character', I mean they are out of character for a butcher's assistant: dung scraping is not what a butcher's assistant does.
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
Um...no. Really? A
veteran player should not be doing anything outside of character. That is is very meta and inappropriate. Maybe I need to make that quote in my signature
bold.
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 05:23:35 PM
Quote from: Kankfly on December 06, 2017, 05:15:36 PM
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
No. A veteran player will know better than retconning something you do ig because it's meta and twinking.
What happened ig, happened ig. There's no retconning.
If you're poor and starving, you're poor and starving. Why do you need sids to "fall back" on?
You need sids so that your character does not die, and at present there's no way to get sids just performing the day-to-day tasks that a butcher's assistant would perform, so you would have to resort to non-butcher-assistant tasks, such as salting, body grebbing, dung scraping, joining a clan, and so on. I'm sort of confused where this talk of 'retcon' is coming from... when I say the actions are 'out of character', I mean they are out of character for a butcher's assistant: dung scraping is not what a butcher's assistant does.
Because if you have 2000 in your bank, you have 2000 in your bank, you're not poor and starving.
Quote from: The Lonely Hunter on December 06, 2017, 05:23:58 PM
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
Um...no. Really? A veteran player should not be doing anything outside of character. That is is very meta and inappropriate. Maybe I need to make that quote in my signature bold.
That's precisely the point: the profession sub-guild would allow us to play butcher's assistants without having to do things against our characters.
You know, if instead of some set amount, there was subguild that let you forage food from midden heaps (and some of those items helped thirst), and maybe sometimes you'd find more than a single obsidian coin, I think that would suffice just as well. Then, if you're starving as a butcher's assistant, you probably do what the rest of the starving butcher's assistants do.
But this has been suggested AT LEAST two other times and nothing has come of it. If anyone is capable of foraging scrape-by amounts of sustenance from heaps in the City to live on as a beggar/street sweep/flavor role, it's in a system so arcane that I don't know about it, and I've played characters who have tried.
But absent that, I wouldn't mind having it represented some other way. Including getting a minimal (and I think we're all talking minimal, here, nobody's saying hundreds of sids or I think even 100 sid) among of coin every RL week.
Quote from: Barzalene on December 06, 2017, 02:47:35 PM
I too love flavor roles, but I disagree that nothing would be hurt. I think the game needs more hunger and desperation, not less. This is especially true for roles whose nature is to be hungry and desperate. Unless it you mean that once your hunger or thirst became near fatal you'd get a half cup of dirty water and a stale piece of bread or a cockroach to eat in exchange for your subguilds. Of course one would lose hitpoints along the way. what with living in desperate poverty.
I definitely think the game needs more hunger and desperation too. But I see this proposal as actually
enabling more common, verge-of-poverty sorts of characters that today aren't very often played.
I think erasing your hunger/thirst while in the city entirely goes too far, but providing either a small amount of coin and/or a very minimal meal every X days will allow PCs to just barely scrape by. As further restriction, cut off the benefit if a PC joins a clan (since as a member of a clan, you're assumed to be virtually working for your clan and not a side job), and cap the reward to 7X coins an RL week, so that somebody who takes a two month break from the game doesn't log back in as rich as a Borsail noble.
Nobody needs to be able to get rich or live the easy life off this proposal. In fact if that's your goal, you'd be better off taking a crafting subguild, where in no time flat you'll be making more per day than the amounts we've been talking about here.
The end result is that you have characters who can roleplay a number of professions that aren't currently coded, yet do exist in the game world, and you'll be able to just barely get by on the verge of poverty by doing so. To me, that's what Allanak should be full of - a bunch of commoners just barely getting by day to day. The whole city is not (with some exceptions in the past) full of actually starving people, just people who are right on the edge.
You can play flavor PCs like chalton herders or butchers assistant's today, it's true, but you usually have to resort to means to support them that aren't quite what those people would actually do. Many of those means encourage no more player interaction than having a virtual income would. I don't think that if we introduced a Profession subguild that PCs would resort to spying or thieving or interacting any less; they'd just end up doing less things that are strange for a character in their role to do in order to get by.
Quote from: valeria on December 06, 2017, 05:56:13 PM
You know, if instead of some set amount, there was subguild that let you forage food from midden heaps (and some of those items helped thirst), and maybe sometimes you'd find more than a single obsidian coin, I think that would suffice just as well. Then, if you're starving as a butcher's assistant, you probably do what the rest of the starving butcher's assistants do.
But this has been suggested AT LEAST two other times and nothing has come of it. If anyone is capable of foraging scrape-by amounts of sustenance from heaps in the City to live on as a beggar/street sweep/flavor role, it's in a system so arcane that I don't know about it, and I've played characters who have tried.
But absent that, I wouldn't mind having it represented some other way. Including getting a minimal (and I think we're all talking minimal, here, nobody's saying hundreds of sids or I think even 100 sid) among of coin every RL week.
Honestly, I like the forage option better, because IC circumstances change and characters grow. I'd rather be the butcher's assistant who foraged for stale crusts for years until finally getting that big break... or growing desperate enough to turn to criminal enterprises... etc, etc, etc. Once that flavor character develops further, the subguild becomes irrelevant. Foraging for scraps, etc within the city, however, allows you to move on from that when the time comes.
A flavor concept only lasts so long before you need some form of story arc to keep them interesting to play; that's true for any character, if there's no movement, no progress, no change, life will inevitably grow stale and their story dull.
Quote from: Delirium on December 06, 2017, 06:12:12 PM
Quote from: valeria on December 06, 2017, 05:56:13 PM
You know, if instead of some set amount, there was subguild that let you forage food from midden heaps (and some of those items helped thirst), and maybe sometimes you'd find more than a single obsidian coin, I think that would suffice just as well. Then, if you're starving as a butcher's assistant, you probably do what the rest of the starving butcher's assistants do.
But this has been suggested AT LEAST two other times and nothing has come of it. If anyone is capable of foraging scrape-by amounts of sustenance from heaps in the City to live on as a beggar/street sweep/flavor role, it's in a system so arcane that I don't know about it, and I've played characters who have tried.
But absent that, I wouldn't mind having it represented some other way. Including getting a minimal (and I think we're all talking minimal, here, nobody's saying hundreds of sids or I think even 100 sid) among of coin every RL week.
Honestly, I like the forage option better, because IC circumstances change and characters grow. I'd rather be the butcher's assistant who foraged for stale crusts for years until finally getting that big break... or growing desperate enough to turn to criminal enterprises... etc, etc, etc. Once that flavor character develops further, the subguild becomes irrelevant. Foraging for scraps, etc within the city, however, allows you to move on from that when the time comes.
A flavor concept only lasts so long before you need some form of story arc to keep them interesting to play; that's true for any character, if there's no movement, no progress, no change, life will inevitably grow stale and their story dull.
Bolded the part I wanted to +1.
All of my flavor PCs lost their spark for me once I'd played them for a bit. There's no ability to transition from flavor to "serious" meta PC in a lot of professions in Arm. I think it's one of the biggest weaknesses of this MUD.
I've played plenty of MUDs that do a much better job, but they're primarily RPIs. I think we can find a middle ground to rewarding any type of play and rewarding more than just the standard "guild" options.
I've played a career whore and a career lumberjack in Allanak myself.
Maybe it's just me, but the struggle was part of the fun! I wouldn't have really wanted it to be any easier.
That said, I've never considered my PC to be 'just flavor'. What they do for coins doesn't necessarily define them.
Quote from: Jherlen on December 06, 2017, 06:04:56 PM
cap the reward to 7X coins an RL week, so that somebody who takes a two month break from the game doesn't log back in as rich as a Borsail noble.
Isn't this not a thing anymore? I think if you log back in after being away for a while, you just get your last payment, not all the ones since you left. I guess if you wanted to introduce some danger to this arrangement (again, without any code changes) you could just put the pay NPC in the labyrinth. Want to get paid? Okay, but you gotta walk by stabby mcstabberson.
I think there's a certain misunderstanding between 'flavor roles' and 'regular characters'. Flavor roles are characters too, and just because you want them to veer toward a more 'flavorful' role, doesn't mean they aren't full-fledged characters. As a character, you need to consider that every character has 'personal growth'. A whore might be more at ease whoring because that is all he knows how to do best, but it doesn't mean that just because there's an easy opportunity to make a great deal of 'sids that doesn't involve sex, he would turn it down simply because he is a whore, much less if he is desperate because he has no clientele and therefore, no income.
There are certainly ways to keep a whore as a whore. Maybe your whore only knows how to whore and doesn't know how to do anything else well. Maybe your whore gets recruited into the Atrium and screws up all the lessons because he can't see the point of playing the political game and prefers the more straightforward business of trading sex for coins. Maybe he doesn't like having to get hit by wooden sparring sticks and the life of a mercenary so he doesn't join the Byn. Maybe he doesn't like the soldiering life, period. Now you have a whore that only feel comfortable whoring, and because he has no clientele, he is desperate, and takes up the side-job of shit digging (or grebbing). It doesn't mean this interferes with his role as a whore, or is in any way out of character for him, it just means he is just a shitty (pun intended) whore trying to survive. But once he's started to get a decent amount of regular customers that he can survive off, I doubt he would continue shit grebbing.
So there you have it, a character that's a 'flavor' role but also a character at the same time. This character doesn't need a subguild to get periodic coins. It's also a character that allows potential of character growth.
Firstly, THIS ISN'T A MUSH!!!
*ahem* Sorry I. Couldn't resist.
Ok, on to brass tacks. The idea of not getting hungry or thirsty with a subguild is pretty neat. It's well thought out as far as how it would work.
Now it's reality check time. Hide your kids, hide your wife this is going to get ugly. The reason people don't play more flavor roles isn't a code issue, it's a player acknowledgement issue. So I'm going to start with a real example, it's been a year don't worry. Once upon a time, I was playing a ranger that through a lot of tears managed to get her bandage skill really high. The group I was with was in the Grey forest for one reason or another and along comes Mr. Rantarri. Mr Rantarri proceeds to rip one of the people in the group a new one, as Mr. Rantarri tends to do. We manage to kill Mr. Rantarri but Ready Player One is near death. I roleplay attempting to stop the bleeding and some other cool medical flavor things. I pull out my medicated bandages, hold my breath and type bandage player one. Success! We ride back to safety, player one still isn't looking so good. We get him on a cot, I roleplay more medical things, he roleplays more groaning and passing out things. For the second time, I hold my breath and type bandage player one. Success! It was a good scene, player one is healing on his own, everybody is rp'ing this near miss appropriately. Along comes leader pc, we explain what happened, explain that my pc patched player one up. Player one is completely healed at this point. Leader pc says, "Come on, let's get you some medical attention, player one."
(https://i.imgur.com/nRgVPSC.gif)
This is a coded flavor thing and it was completely ignored. That was a true story too. I'm pretty sure there are other examples people can come up with. Here's another flavor role that is often negated: bard. It has its own subguild already and has code to support it. How do people react to them? If they're lucky a couple people might tip them. Yeah, I know crappy limerick songs are crappy. But here's were you as the player say I respect that you're trying to do something different, give crappy bard 20 coins.
Ok, enough reality; who needs that? Let's get into flavor roles that aren't supported by code. The first thing you have to do is accept some flavor roles just aren't going to make sense from a gaming perspective. A whore or a barmaid or even a doctor is workable, it's something you can have fun role playing AND get paid. A butcher's apprentice, a ranch hand, a bartender....c'mon now. Really...come on. I'm waiting for someone to say they'd have fun, standing around in the butcher shop, emoting when customers come in to buy meat for an extended period of time....I'm not knocking you, I'm saying I don't believe you. If you mean to tell me, while you're standing out in the wastes near the chalton, tending your flock, some random hunter isn't going to ride up and start killing them even after you say "Hey, these are my bosses chalton!" Let me know your secret.
My question is, are people really going to go out and do "flavor" type things? Don't get me wrong, I love to see someone try the last example. If I saw it, I'd give them kudos...hopefully before they're rolling up their next character.
Coding up a new subguild is cool and all. It just doesn't solve the underlying issue. The underlying issue is players aren't acknowledging players who attempt these roles in the first place to make them worth playing for an extended period of time. If people did, you'd see more doctors, bards and whores around. You acknowledge them by utilizing their services and paying them. Providing them a boon of no hunger or thirst code for suffering through a role that is ignored by other players, isn't going to make them stay in that role.
Related: Back in Tuluk there was this one medic, who worked for the Templarate, and he was amazing. Had needles, bandages, kits, vials, cures... amazing. Brought people back from near death, cured diseases, poisons. The guy was great.
But eventually it was just "Give me a bandage and I'm on my way". Or the player had RL issues and you couldn't find them. You WANTED to include them, but because this is still a game, you couldn't.
In tuluk, he was able to sell his services to the Templarate and get subsistence off that. Because he had a CODED SKILL that was in demand. Frankly, someone serving you drinks or buying your meat at the grocer FOR you isn't a coded skill you care about (unless its haggle). We want to reward coded skills, but the RP stuff always falls to the wayside.
Quote from: Riev on December 07, 2017, 01:47:18 PM
We want to reward coded skills, but the RP stuff always falls to the wayside.
....but Riev, this isn't a mush.
Just code it up, people will be sure to use it if it's well thought out code.
Quote from: Kankfly on December 06, 2017, 05:15:36 PM
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
No. A veteran player will know better than retconning something you do ig because it's meta and twinking.
What happened ig, happened ig. There's no retconning.
If you're poor and starving, you're poor and starving. Why do you need sids to "fall back" on?
100% agree with Kankfly here, your PC uses their virtual sids to survive while offline. No good player does a nonsense retcon like this.
If you are stripping bodies on the side to make ends meet then that is what you are doing ic.
Quote from: Inks on December 07, 2017, 03:52:20 PM
Quote from: Kankfly on December 06, 2017, 05:15:36 PM
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
No. A veteran player will know better than retconning something you do ig because it's meta and twinking.
What happened ig, happened ig. There's no retconning.
If you're poor and starving, you're poor and starving. Why do you need sids to "fall back" on?
100% agree with Kankfly here, your PC uses their virtual sids to survive while offline. No good player does a nonsense retcon like this.
If your PC is starving to death, the range of behaviors that is justifiably in-character expands considerably. The question then becomes: am I playing the character I wanted to play (whore) or the character the game is forcing me to play (grebber/mugger/etc.)? And is that a good or a bad thing?
Quote from: Synthesis on December 07, 2017, 04:10:07 PM
Quote from: Inks on December 07, 2017, 03:52:20 PM
Quote from: Kankfly on December 06, 2017, 05:15:36 PM
Quote from: nauta on December 06, 2017, 02:58:15 PM
(Now, a veteran player will do something outside of character to make the role of a butcher's assistant possible: the first week out of chargen you go to the rinth and strip bodies and fill your bank account, or you dungscrape and fill the bank account, or you greb or whatever, and then once you have enough to subsist on you just 'pretend' that you are poor and starving and so on and focus on being a butcher's assistant.)
No. A veteran player will know better than retconning something you do ig because it's meta and twinking.
What happened ig, happened ig. There's no retconning.
If you're poor and starving, you're poor and starving. Why do you need sids to "fall back" on?
100% agree with Kankfly here, your PC uses their virtual sids to survive while offline. No good player does a nonsense retcon like this.
If your PC is starving to death, the range of behaviors that is justifiably in-character expands considerably. The question then becomes: am I playing the character I wanted to play (whore) or the character the game is forcing me to play (grebber/mugger/etc.)? And is that a good or a bad thing?
If your rancher isn't able to earn real sids from PCs, then you can take that as a sign that your character might not be suited to that type of work. That means - if it were made virtual, your character might still starve to death, because even the VNPCs aren't interested in what your character is offering.
In other words - if your character can't make enough food and water to not starve to death or die of dehydration in the city by being a whore, then he's probably just not a very good whore and should consider stripping bodies in the rinth instead of whoring.
If you want to code virtual work for suspension of hunger/thirst, then you need to also code the potential for critical failure - which could mean a risk of increased hunger, increased thirst, or even a risk of death due to a VNPC who is dissatisfied with the services rendered.
Here's two PCs, let's call them George and Bob.
1. George is a dung scraper. He struggles to survive. His parents died, and all he has is his uncle's dung scraping business to work at, so he goes about dung scraping every day eeking out a modest if precarious living. George gets paid roughly 20 sid a day, enough for a half cup of dirty water and a cockroach kebab.
2. Bob is a butcher's assistant. He struggles to survive. His parents died, and all he has is his uncle's chalton butchery to work at, so he goes about lugging slabs of chalton around and cleaning the knives, cleaning blood from the abattoir in shambles, and he too eeks out a modest if precarious living. Bob gets paid roughly 20 sid a day, enough for a half cup of dirty water and a cockroach kebab.
What's the difference between George The Gong Farmer and Bob The Butcher's Assistant? Both might well develop as characters. Both might well join a mercenary outfit, or beg, or whore themselves out for extra money to supplement their incomes. Or not. Both might well greb for salts and rocks or go to the rinth to strip bodies, or fall into crime. Or not. Both might well engage in murder, corruption, and betrayal. Or not. Both might interact with people outside their day job as well, developing romantic relationships, enmities, and so on. Or not. You might think that either would be dead boring to play, or ignored by the PC population; or you might love playing these two.
The only difference between the two is that George The Gong Farmer can whereas Bob The Butcher's Assistant cannot codedly survive, once their starter coin runs out, doing their job, the thing they claim they do for a living. Bob will eventually starve to death whereas George will not, because George gets 20 actual (coded) coins a day and Bob gets 20 virtual coins a day.
All I'm saying is give Bob a chance! ;D
I'm not for a PC not needing to eat or drink. That removes a lot of poisoning possibilities.
However, I have to disagree with:
Quote from: Lizzie on December 07, 2017, 04:21:32 PM
If your rancher isn't able to earn real sids from PCs, then you can take that as a sign that your character might not be suited to that type of work. That means - if it were made virtual, your character might still starve to death, because even the VNPCs aren't interested in what your character is offering.
If only because that pre-supposes that PCs are the market generators, the movers, the shakers, and the trendsetters. If you're a rancher, PCs may not want your services for a NUMBER of reasons, but the virtual population has different experiences, and needs. Someone who can provide a dozen shanks of chalton a week might find damned good work for a virtual butcher. But there may not be a PC butcher around at the time you're playing your Rancher, or there may be no PC butchers around at ALL.
Don't suppose that vNPC needs mirror PC needs, because PCs have a skillsheet and access to weapon skills and skinning.
Quote from: Riev on December 07, 2017, 04:31:36 PM
I'm not for a PC not needing to eat or drink. That removes a lot of poisoning possibilities.
However, I have to disagree with:
Quote from: Lizzie on December 07, 2017, 04:21:32 PM
If your rancher isn't able to earn real sids from PCs, then you can take that as a sign that your character might not be suited to that type of work. That means - if it were made virtual, your character might still starve to death, because even the VNPCs aren't interested in what your character is offering.
If only because that pre-supposes that PCs are the market generators, the movers, the shakers, and the trendsetters. If you're a rancher, PCs may not want your services for a NUMBER of reasons, but the virtual population has different experiences, and needs. Someone who can provide a dozen shanks of chalton a week might find damned good work for a virtual butcher. But there may not be a PC butcher around at the time you're playing your Rancher, or there may be no PC butchers around at ALL.
Don't suppose that vNPC needs mirror PC needs, because PCs have a skillsheet and access to weapon skills and skinning.
Then play a VNPC. I don't know what to tell you. This is a coded multiplayer game. If you want to play a virtual game, then play it virtually.
This is a multiplayer ROLEPLAYING game, so you should be taking the virtual world into account when you roleplay.
Quote from: Delirium on December 07, 2017, 07:18:30 PM
This is a multiplayer ROLEPLAYING game, so you should be taking the virtual world into account when you roleplay.
Yes, and that includes getting paid virtual sids for virtual work that you use to feed and water your virtual self when you're not logged in playing your character - who is virtual during those hours.
If you want to bring the virtual world into the coded world, then you need to have the virtual world take the coded world into account when it appears. And that means - your whore who gets paid coded sids by virtual customers needs to be risking coded disease, coded muggings, coded robbery, coded killing. If you're not willing to bring that virtual world into your roleplay, then why do you think your character should be getting coded coins?
I'm not arguing for getting coded coins for virtual work. I am arguing that the virtual world matters.
The uncertainty involved in having a virtual profession could be approximated by having a varying benefit, as has been suggested in various iterations on this proposal.
One month you made 200 coins from your virtual job. The next month you only made 100. Maybe you had less clients or maybe you got virtually ripped off or had unexpected virtual business expenses. Up to you to roleplay out.
The PC economy does not accurately reflect the overall economy of Zalanthas. It will never perfectly reflect it. That doesn't mean that PCs play by different rules than v/npcs do, it just means the code is imperfect.
Alternate idea, make more coded "jobs" you can do. They won't pay much, but some NPCs will have interaction syntax, such as, "Work for vennant" or "work for butcher", possibly with a cooldown, where you are stuck in the room until job completion, and encouraged to emote your job out. I'm unsure how difficult that would be to code, however. Also, since the sharp-eyed prostitute seems to have gone missing, there'd probably have to be a brothel put in, possibly in the commoner's quarter.
I was thinking about how Sindome does flavor jobs, and thought it might be a good idea. Thoughts?
EDIT: Maybe not stuck in the room, but if you leave it before completion, you don't get paid.
I have an idea!
1. Add a two-room building in Allanak with the room title "A Red-Walled Brothel House." Not owned by Kurac, just a natural lifeform of a building that would have sprouted in the forest of Allanak anyway.
2. Code a couple of flavor npc whores and a third person to take your money to show you and your pc whore to a backroom with a bed. The first room and this would be the only two rooms.
3. You are done coding. Let the players do the rest.
What do you think? I feel like the less work it is to make, and the more likely it is that it should have been there in the first place, the more likely staff are to make it.
Would be a small payment, since you are already paying the whore pc.
You could make it an actual clan, with an "owner" that is an NPC and a PC player who oversees the day
to day stuff, like, hiring whores and maybe musicians to play in the waiting room, with rooms upstairs
for each established whore, given a room to live in and do business in, and a dorm style room for the
"recruit whores". Free food and water, maybe a clothes bin, but no stipend. You have to pay a percentage
of your earnings to the house each month or half month, like apartments, but not as much. That part
could be automated. Same rules, if you don't pay rent, you're kicked out of the room and are "demoted"
to dorm room whores. Maybe have a stump whore, a room with a very large bed for half-giant whores,
that'd be funny. Maybe have a special area for the elite/Highborn. I dunno.
I also think that some people bring real-world morality into the game, making whoring seem degrading. Whoring,
ig and by the docs, is as good a job as any other trade and sex itself isn't taken so serious. Also jealousy is
rare, but I get that we're human and sometimes that bleeds through. It's the social status of the whore
that marks their worth, a commoner whore being more reputable than say a rinth whore or breed whore. Don't
know if I ever saw a gemmed whore... Also, you get a lot of, "I don't need to pay for sex because I'm so incredibly
sexy myself.", from players. I've seen people try to "save" the whores. Captain Save a Ho suggests you join
a merchant house if you can craft or become an aide. Maybe I just wanna be a whore. :P
And sometimes ig whores just charge too damn much to the wrong customers. You're not going to get customers
charging a couple small to Bynners, especially Runners who barely make anything and only if they've got a crafting/thieving
subguild or a generous Sergeant. Pick a lane and stick with it, or gradually increase the influence of your character to
generate more demand and you can attract richer fish, or scrab, or whatever. Know your environment. Interbreeding is
a big nono, new players may not realize that whoring is a delicate matter and that once you're known to take other races,
especially if you're human and they are gemmed, breeds, sharps etc..., your stock might plummet fast. Unless you want
to be known for that, stick to your own race. It's not racist irl, just ig.
Stop leaking my docs!
Just putting in my two 'sids into this since I've played a lot of the different roles being discussed in the thread in the past.
In order for a player with these sorts of flavor roles to actually get a decent pay from what they do (i.e.: from whoring, fortune telling, dancing, singing, etc.), they would have to contribute more than just what their flavor role is intended to do in order to get by. The only way that PCs with flavor roles can receive their payment to get by through the week is from other PCs giving them coin for what they do. Depending on what it is that your PC does, say that it's fortune telling, now it's a matter of getting enough player attention in order for them to be attracted to your offers, and that too affects your payment. This is how it's meant to be. Knowing how it is to play these sorts of flavor roles, especially when unclanned, the road is rugged and unclear, and again it makes sense.
There's no actual way for a flavor role to get into a coded clan which could help provide you with daily survival benefits like food and water, except if you were a whore for Kurac or had a knack in some crafting skill or otherwise. When speaking in an RP sense, this matches up too. For example, what sorts of benefits would House Kadius or House Kurac have for a firebreather if they can't, say, fill out armor orders? Maybe House Fale could get interested in hiring that firebreather for one of their bashful parties, but again, it's just for that one bashful party. That firebreather is on their own again after that, until they're called upon once more to spit oil from their mouths over a torch again at another time.
Player created clans can help fill this niche by allowing players to express themselves in this fashion, but if pure subsistence and independence is the goal, then a player made clan doesn't really do much to help. It's extremely difficult to play on pure independence, except if you happen to play the busty, thickly-set ranger mama or the honcho, youthful looking hunter stud. Even in those situations too, you will be judged for not being whore/ranger enough for so-and-so. The one viable solution to the subsistence situation for pure courtesans, whores and the like, as harsh as it may seem, would be to avoid subsistence as a whole. You need support from other players, whether it be from coded clans or player clans, in order to keep your PC's flavor role together. From personal experience, I know how it is when concerning this.
Zalanthas is a harsh world, what can I say? *shrug*
Quote from: Classclown on December 10, 2017, 05:36:14 AM
You could make it an actual clan, with an "owner" that is an NPC and a PC player who oversees the day
to day stuff, like, hiring whores and maybe musicians to play in the waiting room, with rooms upstairs
for each established whore, given a room to live in and do business in, and a dorm style room for the
"recruit whores". Free food and water, maybe a clothes bin, but no stipend. You have to pay a percentage
of your earnings to the house each month or half month, like apartments, but not as much. That part
could be automated. Same rules, if you don't pay rent, you're kicked out of the room and are "demoted"
to dorm room whores. Maybe have a stump whore, a room with a very large bed for half-giant whores,
that'd be funny. Maybe have a special area for the elite/Highborn. I dunno.
This is an intriguing idea. A special sort of apartment complex for whores. Maybe have 'negotiate' and 'agree' commands in the front room so that a cut is automatically taken for the House.
From all the rich PCs I've seen around since I started, I don't think we need to make more money easier to get. If anything, PCs should just be more willing to part with their money, rather than sit in silk in a bar described as full of piss and vomit and not even buy a drink.
Quote from: Fernandezj on January 09, 2018, 11:37:56 PM
From all the rich PCs I've seen around since I started, I don't think we need to make more money easier to get. If anything, PCs should just be more willing to part with their money, rather than sit in silk in a bar described as full of piss and vomit and not even buy a drink.
I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Most PCs I see that have money throw it around like it was candy, and those that don't hoard it for one reason or another I can't understand.
Remember also that coin is heavy, that weight is bad in combat, and there is much reduced crimcode at night.
Quote from: Fernandezj on January 09, 2018, 11:37:56 PM
From all the rich PCs I've seen around since I started, I don't think we need to make more money easier to get. If anything, PCs should just be more willing to part with their money, rather than sit in silk in a bar described as full of piss and vomit and not even buy a drink.
Thank you!